Bad History That Keeps Getting Worse

Ryan referenced Princeton scholar Aaron Friedberg’s book “The Weary Titan,” on how Britain ceded world leadership a century ago in the face of economic pressures. He pointed out that while Britain could assume that the United States, with similar values and goals, might take up the burden, we have no similar fallback today.

No, Ryan referred to Friedberg’s book by completely butcheringits thesis. As a result of his misinterpretation, he ended up blaming the outbreak of both world wars on America’s supposed inability to take up the “leadership of the Western world” from Britain, which was supposedly conceding said leadership at the start of the 20th century.

Britain may have been the preeminent power of its day, but it did not really exercise “world leadership” in the sense that Ryan and Barone mean it (i.e., as “leadership of the Western world”). Among other things, Friedberg’s book studied how Britain allowed rising powers to assume greater responsibility in their respective parts of the world in order to free up British resources for its other extensive interests elsewhere around the globe. British policy at the beginning of the 20th century was an attempt to let other rising powers shoulder burdens that Britain could not afford, which is the sort of policy that Ryan explicitly rejects. Of course, these British moves to yield to U.S. ascendancy in the western Atlantic and Western Hemisphere had nothing at all to do with the outbreak of WWI or WWII.

If Ryan had said Western Hemisphere instead of “Western world,” he would have been representing Friedberg’s argument more or less correctly, but it would have ruined his cautionary tale that the preeminent great power ushers in global chaos by “choosing” decline. Ceding dominance of the Western Hemisphere to the U.S. didn’t usher in an era of Great Power rivalry, and it had nothing to do with the causes of the world wars. In fact, after the brief flare-up of tensions over Venezuela, this period marked the beginning of improved relations between Britain and the U.S. U.S.-British reconciliation in this period was not what led to the nightmares of the 20th century.

Ryan’s understanding of Friedberg’s book was quite wrong, and it should make us wonder if he read it or if someone just inaccurately described it to him because it had the word decline in its subtitle. As I’ve mentioned before, the entire Hamilton Society speech revolved around Krauthammer’s argument that “decline is a choice,” and Ryan built on this flawed argument by claiming that U.S. hegemony could (and probably would) be replaced by Chinese or Russian domination of the globe*. This was one of the worst parts of Ryan’s speech, and it is the part that his admirers ought to be doing their best to avoid mentioning. For some reason, they can’t seem to stop talking about it.

P.S. I suppose it goes without saying, but it is instructive that some movement conservatives believe that Ryan has “foreign policy chops” on the basis of a speech and nothing more. On top of that, this is a speech in which Ryan bases the core of his argument on several significant errors of historical interpretation. Republicans have been defining foreign policy experience down for their preferred candidates for a while now, but this is getting out of control.

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7 Responses to Bad History That Keeps Getting Worse

As I’ve mentioned before, the entire Hamilton Society speech revolved around Krauthammer’s argument that “decline is a choice,” and Ryan built on this flawed argument by claiming that U.S. hegemony could (and probably would) be replaced by Chinese or Russian domination of the globe.

Is the Hamilton Society a gaggle of five and six year olds? I can’t imagine anyone else witless enough to still listen to any of Charlie’s prattling with any sense of seriousness beyond recognizing it as further proof of his anger and insanity.

Krauthammer and Ryan both labor under the delusion that the US would be “stronger” if it squandered even more money on unnecessary weapons and foreign troop deployments than it does currently. Total delusion.

Perhaps one should note that the outbreak of the catastrophe known as the First World War owed a good deal to the regrettable fact the British were seriously distracted by the situation in Ireland, and thus were less able to facilitate a resolution of the problem posed by (or arising in the wake of)the assassination of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo.

Of course many of the policies favored by Ryan et.al. would hasten American decline.
And Ryan et.al. consistently express US primacy in terms of military – they forget the appeal of “soft power” and how our aggressive foreign policy has eroded some of our soft power appeal.

It seems to me that the US’s strength has been its rather amazing ability to make money – and that ironically it is the Repubs who choose military might over “making money” as a way to secure our interests. If we got out of the middle east and gave up containing the Chinese in the Pacific – if we focused on our relationships with Canada and Mexico (a “pivot” to North America so to speak) both economically, transportation wise, free flow of goods, strategically etc
we would dominate the markets so much that we wouldn’t need to worry about China, deficits, cutting entitlements etc. So called free markets Repubs should get this – instead they chomp away at phony readings of history and propose more intervention more tanks etc.

What, pray tell, is meant by he “Western World” in the historical context of 100 years ago? WWI was half of the “western world” going to war with the other half. And various European powers, along with the United States, had been fighting wars with each other many times in the centuries preceding.

The unified “west” as we now think of it did not exist until after WWII, with the rise of the Soviet bogeyman, the destruction of European fascism, the scaling back of British empire, and the creation of NATO and pan-European institutions such as the EEC.

If the world were as it were a century ago, we’d have German tanks rather than German banks crushing the Greeks to smithereens.

The world’s leading power at the turn of the last century, Britain made the choice in 1914 to go to war, a war in which it “won.” Within two generations of that victory, the British Empire was on the ash heap of history and Britain was reduced to being a faded European power with a few obscure outposts like Hong Kong, St. Helena, Pitcairn Island and St. Peter and St. Paul’s Rocks to remind it that it had been an Empire. There is something that America can learn from Britain’s World War One fiasco.